Architecture trend: A dream home in Sweden is just a few clicks away

Written by Team Digital on 12/2/16

Sweden is known for its passion for equality. This applies as much to class distinctions as it does to gender roles. Standing out from the crowd or boasting about one’s wealth is frowned upon. You should want to be a harmonious part of a whole. So it’s no wonder that an architecture project was started which identified the average dream home in Sweden in an especially democratic way: by the average number of clicks on property offers online.

The “House of Clicks” Experiment

The so-called “House of Clicks” experiment arose because Swedish architects and real estate agents both wanted to know what the dream home of the majority of the Swedish people looked like exactly. So they arranged a unique kind of experiment: 200 million user clicks on 89,000 properties were analysed over a period of 10 months at a Swedish real estate portal. Typical factors such as size, price, number of rooms and bathrooms were investigated, as were “soft features”, i.e. for example, the colours of the walls, flooring and kitchen equipment. The result of this astonishingly uncomplicated new statistical method was a democratic house, “chosen by the people”, which is typically Swedish in many respects.

Traditional and purist exterior

When designing an exterior façade, Swedes typically focus on traditional values, but also place value upon purist design: The “House of Clicks” is a modern, simple wooden cube which calls to mind a shipping container from the outside. But the wooden façade, painted Falu red, underlines the Swedes’ awareness of tradition: Falu red, which comes from the now closed copper mine in Falun, was used as early as the 16th century as the preferred colour for typical Swedish wooden houses.

One of the best results of the unusual survey: The “House of Clicks” is actually being built and should even go into production with sufficient demand. The price for the dream house in Sweden comes to 300,000 euros – this was determined statistically too.

Architecture trend of the future?

The “House of Clicks”, designed by a fifth of the population, or two million Swedes, is without a doubt an unprecedented design experiment, allowing us to understand more precisely the taste of the average person seeking a property in one country. Some see this as a new creative impulse for architects and real estate agents. Others believe that in the future architects will be less creative, but will instead bend to the will of the masses with projects like the “House of Clicks”. It’s still exciting to see whether the new architecture trend surrounding the Swedish dream home will also take in other countries.

Find more current architecture trends at Engel & Völkers. We have many years of experience on the international property markets and are represented in more than 32 countries worldwide. Visit our website and find your personal dream house among our current properties.